The Pumpkin Seed Massacre

by Susan Slater

  “We’ve lost him,” said one of the paramedics. His voice sounded hollow.

  Julie stood and moved with Ben toward the door. The Indian woman cried softly at her desk.

  “Is there anything we can help with, Mary?” Ben asked as the woman looked up.

  “No. I can take care of things.” She blew her nose. “Ben, thank you for trying to keep him with us.”

  As Julie stepped outside, she was blinded by the sunlight. The day was glorious. A slight breeze played with the hem of her skirt and tugged at her hair. She waited and hoped the numbness would pass. It didn’t.

  “I need to call the station, and my mobile isn’t getting a signal,” Julie said. “Bob will want to do something for the evening news. Is there a phone someplace out of the way?”

  “The community center,” Ben said.

  Mary stood by her desk as the two Indian paramedics strapped the governor’s body to a gurney. She sent a young man from the community center to notify the man’s family. His brothers needed to know so that they could meet at the house to dress the corpse in traditional Tewa ritual clothing. His moccasins would be reversed, and a bit of his favorite food, something that he enjoyed most in life, would be wrapped in cotton and placed in his left armpit.

  Mary walked to his desk and gathered a few pumpkin seeds from the basket he always kept there and carefully folded them into a Kleenex. She would take them to the house and see that they made the journey to the next world with him. Everything in the afterworld or the world beneath this one was reversed. So, the amount of food sent with the man was in direct proportion to his station in this life. If an individual was not so highly regarded, or worse yet had not led a virtuous life, more food and even an extra pair of moccasins would be added because the road would have many turns and be rocky.

  The governor would need very little of his favorite food for his journey because the road would be straight. A few pumpkin seeds would be perfect. This man was a good man, much loved by his people. Mary stopped to find another Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes. She couldn’t believe that she’d never see him alive again.

  But, she needed to hurry. Tonight there would be a velorio and all the members of the village would come for a few minutes to pay their respects. Some relatives and close friends would stay the night. Meals would be served at all hours. Sometimes the family would sing Spanish funeral dirges and offer Spanish prayers.

  Mary locked the office door and walked up the dirt path that led to the village. What did it mean that their governor would take a space in the cemetery in front of the church? One of the new spaces created by the expansion of the grounds. Would there be more deaths? Until the spaces were filled?

  Mary paused before turning down the road that led to the governor’s house. The next four days were critical to the governor’s passing safely into the next world. She thought she had seen his soul leave his body. It had to leave through the mouth and Ben and his pretty lady friend were trying to bring him back. Mary sighed. She hoped they had not interfered.

  The soul needed to move on to the next world. Nothing in this world should impede it. If the soul felt it had unfinished business on earth, it would go around to all the people it owed something to and ask forgiveness. Mary suddenly thought of the five dollars she had loaned the governor on Monday.

  “I don’t need the money. It was a gift.” She shouted to an empty sky and turned down the road already lined with cars bringing mourners.

  + + +

  Julie stared at her phone—no signal. Eventually, she located an ancient pay phone under the bleachers. She deposited coins and slumped against the wall. She was still shocked to see someone die. The assignment had suddenly lost its allure. When Bob answered, she outlined her ideas for a spot and got the go-ahead. She joined Ben on the bleachers and for a long time they sat side by side. Ben took her hand but didn’t break the silence.

  “Thanks for helping,” he said finally.

  “The outcome should have been different. I can’t believe we lost him.” Julie turned to face Ben. “I feel strongly about getting this information to the public. This was the sixth death. I’ve talked the station into sending a crew out. Is there somewhere we could film a spot for the six o’clock news?”

  “Anywhere outside the village,” Ben said.

  “Will you let me interview you on camera?”

  “I guess so, if you think I can help.”

  + + +

  The six o’clock news opened with the electronic logo bursting onto the screen and the tag line, “Governor of Tewa Pueblo dies of unexplained illness, flood waters recede in the Midwest ... this and more, stay tuned for Channel Nine News with ...” a cut to a commercial and then the two evening anchors began: “Channel Nine is on the scene this evening in the Tewa Pueblo, where yet another unexplained death has occurred. We take you now live to Julie Conlin, our reporter in the field.”

  Julie stood beside the road that curved behind her through the red rock canyon. The long rays of the afternoon sun spread a rufous tint across the ground while, above her, high white cumulus clouds had exploded over the mesa’s top, their billowy edges defined by the azure sky. She moved toward the camera.

  “Dan, Margo,” she began, “At 2:20 this afternoon, the governor of the Tewa Pueblo died of an unexplained illness—the sixth person to die of the same symptoms. I’ve asked Ben Pecos to share with our viewing audience what this means ...”

  The camera zoomed in for a close-up of the man beside her and seemed to continue to glide into his large dark eyes. It sought his core and transmitted the raw pain to those watching. He was open and vulnerable and powerful and believable. He talked of Indian epidemics, curses of the past, and eulogized the elderly who had died that week, taking with them the rich history of his people.

  Julie knew the piece had been good, exactly right for the severity of the problem. People all over New Mexico—the United States, for that matter—were beginning to count the deaths on their fingers and put any plans to visit the area on hold.

  THREE

  He was governor. Johnson Yepa was governor of the Tewa Pueblo. He repeated the title out loud ...”Governor of the Tewa Pueblo.” He would lead his people in this time of need. He would champion the rights of the abused, make opportunities available that had never been possible before. He would be written about, remembered as a modern savior. The village of his ancestors, of his peers, of his family would never be the same again.

  There would be money for whatever his people wanted. Even new homes. No more fighting over HUD handouts, like that row of pitched-roof houses that flanked the village, the first thing outsiders saw as they approached the pueblo from the main highway—pointy-roofed houses that lined a paved road one-quarter of a mile long aimed toward the mountains but going nowhere. It looked for all the world like a strip of suburbia had dropped from the sky—seventeen houses with slanted roofs, one block before the Tewa Industrial Park (a corrugated steel sided building that housed a machine shop), the fire station, public health clinic, tribal offices, and two blocks before visitors saw four-hundred-year-old homes clustered around bare dirt arteries that wound in and out, lacing the community together.

  Johnson remembered all too well that the houses were a gift, although questionable, of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the late 1970s. The Washington bureaucrats had promised to build a number of frame and stucco three-bedroom houses and gave the Indians a choice of flat or pitched roofs. All but one of the eighteen homes had a pitched roof. His people had become dependent upon handouts. The houses were just one example. But even the handouts had strings ....

  Besides the bickering about how the new houses would be allotted, the red-tape of just getting them done rivaled working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Many people from Tewa and the outside were genuinely incensed that the village allowed pitched roofs and ruined the esthetics of the centuries-old adobe structures in the village. Johnson and others simply pointed to the shoddy workmanship and sta
ted that the HUD houses would fall down in twenty years anyway.

  The anger and gossip seemed to dissipate as the first house was erected on its own slab a discreet distance from where its neighbor would be. Then envy set in. There was a waiting list and an elaborate scheme for choosing the owners. Those getting a new home stood in line to pick from the stacks of carpet swatches or decide the fate of their kitchens and bathrooms by peering at two inch squares of linoleum that fanned out from a key ring.

  Johnson Yepa’s mother had been eligible for one of the pitched-roof houses. When she died, he inherited it. It was his mother who put in the rose pink toilet, matching sink and bathtub. He put in the split-rail fence and lawn, the only lawn on the street, the only lawn in the pueblo—the strip of rough Bermuda grass now sprinkled with dinner-plate-sized brown spots caused by the pee of the neighbor’s dog.

  Johnson squatted, then got down on all fours. Enough of this daydreaming, he needed to finish the job he’d started. Dragging the last of the forty-odd plastic milk bottles filled with water, he crawled to the edge of the lawn. Smoothing a circular resting place, he seated the gallon of water upright, and sat back to survey his handiwork. On hands and knees, he had spent most of the morning planting these guaranteed dog deterrents. The lawn now looked like it had sprouted small opaque statues each sporting a jaunty red or blue cap. Not bad. This should do it. His wife had read in a magazine that this would work.

  He stood and brushed loose bits of lawn clippings from his slacks and then retired to the porch. He was admiring the display when he saw the dog. It started toward the yard, stopped, loped to the corner where Johnson’s property met the asphalt, trotted along the front of the split rail fence, dropped to its stomach and squirmed forward, under the bottom rail and onto the lawn. Johnson thought it tried to make eye contact before it picked out a perfectly green patch of grass and squatted, right in front of him, ignoring his shouting.

  Johnson took one last look at the lawn. The hot desert sun, now overhead, made it uncomfortable to stay out much longer. He watched as the dog sniffed at half a dozen of the jugs before going home. The dog was probably too dumb to understand a warning. But maybe the bottles would work for smart dogs. He’d leave them.

  Today the brown grass wasn’t his only problem. He needed to plan. With the governor dead, the honorable Johnson Yepa would sign the papers to put a casino on Indian land. His land. A real casino, no bingo palace with fake Vegas dancers in sequins and feathers. No grandmas who played twenty cards at a time and lost their welfare checks. No. This would be high class. Men in suits driving fancy cars. Men who would bet a hundred dollars at a time. And come back for more. He pulled open the screen door but turned back and decided to do what he did almost every day—walk to the site he’d chosen for the casino, give life to his dream. The dream that would save his people from poverty.

  Johnson would walk to the two acres down by the river, about a mile from where he was standing. His plan was to extend the street in front of his house. Make it go somewhere and keep the traffic from disturbing the old portion of Tewa. People wouldn’t even realize they were in an Indian village. He had learned early on that living in HUD housing negated his heritage. Somehow you couldn’t be the real thing if the roof of your house wasn’t flat and the walls weren’t made of earth. His wife sold fry bread in front of their house every summer on weekends but never did as well as her sister who lived in an old adobe three blocks away. Anglos, who could figure them?

  Sweat dotted his hairline as Johnson struck out behind his house cutting through a gully that connected with a hard packed dirt road leading to the river. Tumbleweeds, green and pliable, grew waist high in early August. Struggling up the rocky incline, Johnson waited at the top to catch his breath. His new oxblood brown Ropers were covered with red dust, but he hardly noticed. When he started out again, Johnson kicked a flattened Pepsi can, kept it going in a straight line down the middle of the road until he tired of the game and scooped it up to put in his pocket. He hated litter. He hated poverty. As governor, he would lead his people to jobs, status, the money to have a good education and health care.

  As a little personal reward, he’d buy himself a powerboat and maybe that new Cadillac. A red convertible Cadillac. A little “up-front” money had been mentioned by the investors to the tune of two hundred thousand. Johnson could hardly contain his glee; he would be rich. A shadow flitted across the sun—a hawk—maybe something larger. Johnson paused but kept the thoughts of what he had done in order to become rich from pushing into his consciousness. It was best not to dwell on it.

  “Almost there,” Johnson said out loud and felt the excitement bubble up like it always did. A walk in 97 degree heat was no picnic. But any discomfort was always forgotten when he gazed upon the two acres that were soon to be transformed, made glorious by his careful planning. Johnson’s hair, heavy with pomade, hugged his scalp and trapped droplets of sweat, but he couldn’t scratch and disturb the high wave that circled up from his forehead. He pulled his brown polyester shirt out away from his skin and felt refreshed as a breeze skipped in to tickle his chest and dry the perspiration under his arms. He felt wilted. So, why did he come here every day? Suffer the heat and discomfort over and over—but he knew why. It was his dream, his life. He couldn’t stay away.

  The words of the investors echoed in his ears. “This is a good choice. Perfect for our plan.” He remembered the first time the three of them had stood silently looking at the barren field. Johnson couldn’t say what the others saw, but he was looking at his casino. Its parking lot alone would be an acre of asphalt. Johnson could see the towering lights that, in pairs, would spring up out of tiny islands of greenery. At midnight, it would be as bright as day. Millions of pieces of crushed mirrors would be imbedded in the facade of the building itself, each sliver reflecting a palette of primary colors as spotlights turned and scattered light through the cascading water of the twenty foot fountain. He would be able to drive a semi through the gilt edged, double-door entry.

  The carpet inside would be thick and one inch deep. Purple, yes, he liked purple. Johnson hadn’t decided whether he would wear a tuxedo in the evenings. He might wear a silk shirt with ballooning sleeves. What had the saleslady called it? A poet’s shirt? He knew he would wear black patent leather loafers with a bar of gold trim across the instep and one-and-one-half-inch block heels. The shoes were in a box behind the seat of the Bronco. Sometimes his wife ridiculed his clothes and laughed with his sisters behind his back. So, she didn’t need to know about the shoes. But who would have the last laugh when they saw him with movie stars and toasting his success among politicians?

  “This could be another Inn of the Mountain Gods.” Johnson recalled the remark that had made his heart beat wildly. There was nothing wrong in thinking big. The investors could see the possibilities. And Johnson liked the idea of duplicating the success of the Mescalero Apaches south of Ruidoso. Why not have a pueblo get in on the tourist action? Attract a few rich Texans. The pueblos didn’t have timber or fishing rights to sell. No one would ever discover oil on their land. One pueblo grew blue corn for a line of London-based body shop products, another opened a native-plants nursery, two operated sand and gravel pits; but, not one really made money, not even the ones that had bingo—not big money, like a casino.

  Johnson nervously picked at the cuticle on his thumb. There would be some who would say that the price of all this was too great, that he shouldn’t have ... shouldn’t have done what was necessary. But what had he really done anyway? He’d just taken advantage of an opportunity. Isn’t that the way the investors had phrased it? An opportunity—one that wouldn’t come again.

  He turned back and saw the white walls of the casino waver mirage-like in the distance and felt relief like a gentle wind carry away his concerns. He felt uplifted. He believed that he had been called upon to make this possible. Yes. He would lead his people forward.

  + + +

  “Someone’s holding on one,” Gloria s
aid.

  “I’ll take it in my office.”

  Sandy walked past the four women at the switchboard. Sunday, and IHS had to staff the phones. The calls had started after the broadcast on Thursday. “Will I be exposed to the mystery illness if I visit New Mexico?” That wasn’t so bad, but then some of the questions got ridiculous. “I was in Hobbs last week, should I get tested?” Tested. The illness didn’t even have a name, let alone some way to predict it. The public expected medicine to have an answer to everything. How soon they forgot Legionnaires Disease or Toxic Shock Syndrome.

  Sandy picked up his phone braced for the worst.

  “Hey, pal, you’re up to your eyeballs with this one.” The voice was familiar.

  “Pres!” Preston Samuels, Director of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, had been a mentor and supervisor.

  “Tell me about this news conference tomorrow. I’m being encouraged to attend.”

  “Only if you have some news about the tissue and blood samples we sent.”

  “I don’t want to sound crass, but I’m not sure you had our full attention until the last two deaths. It’s not like we’re sitting on our hands waiting for a new challenge.”

  “So, the answer’s no?”

  “Incomplete. We’re still working, but don’t get your hopes up. Looks like a pneumonia but difficult to classify.”

  “If we’re lucky, we may already be out of the woods. We haven’t had a death in four and a half days.”

  “Let’s hope. But you know what they say about luck—it only applies to horseshoes.”

  + + +

  Three epidemiologists, including Preston Samuels from the CDC, an official from the state health agency, a representative from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Dr. Sanford Black, infectious disease specialist, sat on the dais in Woodard Hall at the University of New Mexico. All the big guns, Julie thought as she adjusted her recorder. The state was getting its ducks in a row pretty quickly on this one. But didn’t it have to? The summer’s tourism was probably already down the toilet.